DocHoliday posted this on August 17th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, DA:2, Dragon Age, Dragon Age 2, General, RPGs, Single player, swtor, video.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/08/17/new-dragon-age-2-trailer/
So I debated a bit about posting on this based on my disdain of pretty looking trailers and my frustration with the previous Dragon Age support and DLC, but I decided it warranted a quick post. To recap a little bit, I’m still a big fan of Bioware and absolutely loved Dragon Age Origins. However my main issues have come from their support and rollout of content which makes me leery about their ability to support an MMO. Their decision to push out more DLC as opposed to fixing some major gameplay issues was a big issue for me and concerns me quite a bit for their future games.
With all that being said, I will continue to watch Dragon Age 2 as I really do enjoy single player RPGs as they’re a nice distraction from MMOs or during periods when I’m stuck without a good internet connection. I am intrigued that they decided to only have one character option as opposed to all the diversity in Origins and Awakenings but that should allow them to focus the story a bit more.
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DocHoliday posted this on May 8th, 2010.
Categorized as Bioware, General, lotro, podcast, RPGs, Single player, TOR.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/08/what-podcasts-are-you-listening-to/
I figured I’d toss this out to folks and hopefully you can help me fill out my Podcast directory a bit. I travel quite a bit so I do have lots of time to make it though various shows but I’m finding myself running out of episodes which is just a bad thing. So, help me figure out what all I’m missing 
I do have some other sports related ones that are seasonal (Football and Hockey) but primarily I’m looking for either gaming related or techie stuff.
As of now I’m currently listening to:
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DocHoliday posted this on May 6th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, General, Single player, star wars, TOR.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/05/06/not-as-much-of-a-bioware-fan-these-days/
For those of you not interested in Dragon Age, Star Wars: The Old Republic (TOR) or Bioware you can stop reading now as I just wanted to get a few things off my chest
I’m going to backtrack a bit and cover some topics that have already been talked about on numerous sites but for me paints a pattern of what we can expect from Bioware in the future. Previously I’ve been a huge supporter of Bioware and up until recently would gladly give them my money for games they released, but that support is waning quickly. However, I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong and for things to turn out differently, I’m just starting to get very worried about the warning signs.
I’ll start with Dragon Age as this piece of news was what pushed me over the edge with Bioware. I’ve been pretty happy overall with Dragon Age although the re-playability of Awakenings was no where near as fun as Origins. To add on that, there’s been no mention of any sort of patch to Awakenings to fix any of the issues surrounding that title. Granted, it is pretty good, but still like all games, there are issues with it some of which are pretty severe. So yesterday they announce a new DLC – Darkspawn Chronicles which does actually sound like a neat idea but continues down the path that has annoyed me with Bioware. First off, the idea of playing a Darkspawn does sound intriguing, so I will give them credit for putting together a neat concept. However, with Dragon Age it appears that Bioware is more concerned with getting out content that they can charge for as opposed to getting out and maintaining quality content. Not to mention that I’m still upset about the whole RtO fiasco in which it appeared they didn’t have the resources to get that content out due to the push to hit the Awakenings in-store release date. Based on RtO I will be shocked if this DLC actually gets out the door on time and am expecting that the new DLC will disappoint on content.
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DocHoliday posted this on April 13th, 2010.
Categorized as Age of Conan, Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, Eve Online, expansion, festival, General, lotro, mount and blade, pvp, RPGs, Rune-keeper, Single player, Skirmishes, Warband, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/shifting-play-style/
For the past couple of weeks I have been branching out for a bit from LOTRO mainly from a lack of dedicated time. Not that I don’t have time available but that time is frequently and without warning interrupted which makes it very hard to do some of the things I enjoy in LOTRO, like raiding and group content. Because of this I’ve been shifting a bit from my normal play style in LOTRO to some other avenues. This has also been part of the reason for a lack of activity here as I just haven’t had all that much to write about. But for now this just feels like a little bump in the road.
Inside of LOTRO this has included a lot of the spring festival and the Ale Association quests. I’ve also been running a fair number of skirmishes but those can require attention depending on what skirmish and tier I’m attempting. And I’ve also been running around with my baby RK who just dinged 22. I’ve been enjoying the new Lone Lands area quite a bit as it is a MUCH better flow from Bree, although for an RK it is a little dis-jointed. The transition along the book epic lines was great as it takes you straight from Bree to Candaith and for me I was around 20ish before finishing off book 1 as I had done a number of other things in Bree. The issue I ran to on my RK was the level 15 class quest for RKs is there in the Lone Lands and I ended up picking up some other quests that did throw me off a tad. Nothing terrible, but I’m really trying to walk through this zone in order and I ended up with some scattered quests as I normally grab all quests I can see
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DocHoliday posted this on March 18th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, crafting, Dragon Age, expansion, RPGs, Single player.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/dragon-age-awakenings-review/
So I posted my initial thoughts on launch day but I’ve now had the chance to play through to the end of Awakenings and thought I’d share a more detailed review. I’m not going to include spoilers, but I will mention a few “mistakes” that I made and suggest some other ways to do it. So that might be considered a spoiler, but really I look at it as a preferred order to work through the quests. With that said, I’m dying to talk about things so if anyone wants to talk specifics let me know and I’ll open up a Spoiler/Discussion thread.
For my first play-through, I used my Dual-wielding Warrior who I ended up re-specing a couple of times as I progressed and unlocked more of the specializations. The new spec lines are MUCH better then the original ones and they’re all purchasable from the various vendors, so I highly recommend getting them as soon as you can. As I referenced in my previous post, the Greywardens website has the scoop on all these for all the classes so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to check them out ahead of time. Most of the cool skills/abilities can’t be unlocked right away (2nd skill in each line is a level 22 requirement) so you do have some time to get the books and play around a bit with them. I did “cheat” a bit and save my game, buy a respec stone, check out all the specs, and if there wasn’t something I liked re-load my game I ended up deciding to go with the Spirit Warrior and Guardian specs with the templar spec from the original game. This allowed me to pretty well fit the role of AoE DPS and yet still survive as a tank when need be. Guardian spec has some REALLY handy abilities for keeping agro and protecting the party while the Spirit Warrior line just rocks in general This combination has crazy defensive bonuses and some really fun AoE skills which make for a great time. For you LOTRO players, think Champion DPS with Warden survivability in heavy armor 
Also, the additional abilities in the Warrior line are incredibly useful and I used them in almost every fight. I’m looking forward to really checking out the new rogue stuff and I’m saving my mage for last as there are what appear to be some awesome spells.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 16th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, gear, RPGs, Single player.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/dragon-age-awakenings-launch/
So I ended up stopping off at my local Best Buy today to pick up DA:A as there wasn’t a real reason to pre-order or anything like that. I’ve got about 5 hours or so in on my archer rogue and my dual-wielding warrior combined so I thought I’d give a few thoughts.
First off, if you haven’t read up on it the folks over at GreyWardens.com have a great page dedicated to all things Awakening. I’m going to try very hard to avoid any spoilers, so here are my initial thoughts.
The carry over from DA:O was pretty smooth although I had my Warrior come over with no weapons 
I realized that all DLC wasn’t going to transfer but I thought at least the meteorite sword wasn’t DLC but oh well, I can already tell we’re going to get much better stuff soon enough so I”m not terribly worried. There is a thread on the forums about a way to “fix” this which does appear to work, but I’m not claiming it is the correct way to do it. If you’re interested here’s the link. However, I am a little concerned that it appears the Warden’s Keep Blood skills don’t seem to be working quite right but maybe I’m just not paying enough attention.
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DocHoliday posted this on March 2nd, 2010.
Categorized as crafting, End Game, epic line, gambits, group, legendary items, lore, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Mirkwood, screenshots, Single player, volume 3, Warden.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/03/02/my-first-day-in-volume-3/
I was pretty successful yesterday, although I ended up running out of steam towards the evening and didn’t get quite as much done as I had planned.
I started off on my Minstrel as I had less to do on him. I had logged out the previous night at Gath Forthnir such that I could jump right in and finish off the final quest of Volume 1. Considering this is still a level 50 quest, my 65 minstrel had a LOT of fun running through there. The “Inspire Greatness” buff is quite fun and I ended up having some real nifty big numbers floating around my screen The biggest was my Call to the 2nd Age critting for over 5K on all three mobs attacking me! Here’s a shot of me in the middle of that quest, and a shot of the buff (notice at this point I had forgotten to re-do my legendaries)…
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DocHoliday posted this on February 20th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, expansion, RPGs, runes, Single player.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/more-awakening/
And the news from Bioware keeps on coming Some of it is good, and some is not so exciting (for me at least)
They’ve released on their wiki site information about some of the new Mage spells which do sounds pretty darn cool! This is coupled with the announcement that one of the new specialization lines for mages is the Battlemage. But one of my concerns from my previous post was confirmed in that many of the Battlemage spells (which were showed in the videos) can in fact create friendly fire incidents and as such careful positioning will be required. Basically this line allows the mage to create a pulsating ring of various kinds of damage depending on the spell used. Certainly some cool stuff, but will be a bit tricky.
The Friday update also released info on Sigrun, and there’s a blog from one of the lead writer’s going into more detail on her story. Not a whole lot of new information but nice to fill out the back-story of this character. Also, I might have missed this somewhere else, but they talk about runes that can be added to weapons (I’m guessing a similar concept to how LOTRO does it for legendary items), which will be a nice way to further customize things.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 19th, 2010.
Categorized as Awakening, Bioware, Dragon Age, expansion, RPGs, Single player, video.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/19/dragon-age-awakening-updates/
So yesterday was a pretty big day for Awakening news with 2 gameplay videos and another character revealed. Once again, we see more shots of Oghren (the dwarf from Origins) included in these videos so there are theories that he’s the character who rolls over from Origins. I really hope it is not him and that they’re just teasing us, but we shall see. Overall, I really don’t think there’s a bad choice (other then maybe Sten) for the returning character but my favorites would be Morrigan, Alistair, Leliana, or Zevran. Heck, even having the dog return would be fun Whatever they decide, I do hope there’s some tie in a codex (their version of a deed log) entry or some other in-game mechanism to learn about our previous companions.
First off, 2 new reviews are up as both Destructoid.com and Gamespot.com were given a chance to play through some of the game. Both reviews are somewhat similar and mention that Awakenings really isn’t about any specific feature but more amping up what we all loved about Origins. There’s some discussion on some of the new surprises from the various mobs as well as some new tricks up the sleeves of our characters. But overall, there really isn’t all that much new information coming out of these reviews.
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DocHoliday posted this on February 4th, 2010.
Categorized as Bioware, Dragon Age, End Game, expansion, lotro, Minstral, Minstrel, Raid, Raids and End-game, RPGs, Single player.
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Full link: http://docholidayj.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/more-single-player-focus-recently/
So I’ve been quiet lately and that’s mainly due to real-life distractions and work getting quite a bit busier for me. I really haven’t had much time to fully devote to a game so I’ve steered more towards single-player games that I can pause
I’ve got a backload of LOTRO items, and will be getting back into a better blogging routine as I”m really itching to get back to Middle-Earth. Especially since there’s a new raiding group that I joined so I’ll have a chance to get back into some more of the end-game stuff that I so enjoy! I’ll be working on my minstrel and as such you’ll probably see some more posts on his progress and how I handle skirmishes as well.
The biggest in-game news for me is that my mule kinship (which was formed with the help of some of the blogging community) reached rank 7 and the kin-house right behind my house was still available. So I’ve been slowly moving things around and filling that up, and working to re-build my bank account . Here’s a shot of my minnie out front of my new and sparsely decorated house. Too bad you can’t mail items across servers as I know Merric and Goldenstar have TONS of household items
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